FIFA says Iran won't be excluded from World Cup

FRANKFURT, Germany -- Soccer's governing body will allow
Iran to play in next year's World Cup despite calls from German
politicians for the Islamic nation to be banned because the
country's president denies the Holocaust.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the Holocaust a "myth"
used by Europeans as a pretext for carving out a Jewish state in
the heart of the Muslim world.

Ahmadinejad's comments were denounced in Germany, which is
sensitive to its Nazi past. Hitler's Nazi regime was responsible
for the deaths of six million Jews in the Holocaust.

But Sepp Blatter, head of soccer's world governing body, said
FIFA separates sports and politics.
"We're not going to enter into any political declarations,"
Blatter told The Associated Press on Friday in Tokyo, where he's
attending the Club World Championship.
"There have been so many rants from heads of states, even in
Europe," he said. "We in football, if we entered into such
discussions, then it would be against our statutes. We are not in
politics."

The calls to banish Iran from the event in Germany came mostly
from the opposition Greens party, although they had been supported
by parts of the media and members of the country's ruling
coalition.

"A country with such a president, who is driving the country
into isolation, has nothing to do at the World Cup," said Angelika
Beer, a Greens member of the European Parliament.

The leader of the Greens in Germany's parliament, Volker Beck,
said Iran must be shown that "this cannot go on and that it cannot
remain without consequences."

Social Democrats lawmaker Swen Schulz said the president's
"unbearable comments" had "endangered" Iran's participation in
the World Cup.

FIFA spokesman Andreas Herren said Iran will take part in the
32-nation tournament.

"FIFA strictly separates sports from politics," he said.

Earlier this week, Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza
Asefi said: "It is a childish attitude to follow Zionist
propaganda aimed at depriving the Iranian football team of its
place on the pretext that Iran mixed up sports with politics."

Iran coach Branko Ivankovic stressed that "a time to make
friends" is the official World Cup motto.

"The best thing about sport is that it is completely apart from
politics," Ivankovic said. "FIFA's official position has always
been to ban any mixing of sports and politics."

Iran has been drawn to play Mexico, Portugal and Angola in Group
D.

Yugoslavia was expelled from the 1992 European Championship
following United Nations Security Council sanctions in 1992 and was
prevented from entering qualifying for the 1994 World Cup. South
Africa was prevented from playing international soccer games by
FIFA from 1964-92 because of its apartheid policy.